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Gebel (Jebel) al-Mawta in the
Siwa Oasis of Egypt is known, for fairly
obvious reasons, as the Mountain of the Dead,
because it is here in this conical mountain a
little over a kilometer to the north of Shali
along the main road from the escarpment that a
number of tombs are situated. Local residents
also call it Gebel (Qaret) al-Musabbarin (Missabbarin),
meaning Mountain of the Embalmed. The tombs,
which cover every inch of its base and are
situated on its terraces and on all sides of the
conical part, date from the
26th Dynasty, the
Greek (Ptolemaic) and the
Roman periods, though there appear to be no
Christian burials.
Though there are some notable ones, most of
the tombs on Gebel al-Mawta are barren, and
bones once littered the mountain. Tradition
maintains that Radwan, the king of
Siwa at the time of the Arab invasion of
Egypt, took the bodies from Gebel al-Mawta and
threw them into many of the springs in an
attempt to poison the enemy. Also, despite the
fact that the people of the Siwa believe the
mountain to be haunted and will not venture
there at night, it is here, in times of great
rains and invasions by modern armies, that the
inhabitants go for protection, living in the
caves with the dead. Unfortunately, they also
destroyed many of the caves, chipping away the
inscriptions and even violating the mummies in
search of amulets. |
